Apr 18 Glenn Greenwald Cheerleads for Russian State-controlled Media

Glenn Greenwald is known to his fans as something of a fearless leader raging against state power, thanks to his uncanny ability to manufacture outrage out of thin air. Thin air, though, is all he has, and now he's exposed that himself. In his zeal to defend International criminal snoop and all-around crazy guy Julian Assange, Greenwald is cheerleading a defense of Russian state-owned television channel RT, who gave Mr. Assange a job. A job, mind you, Assange opened with a chummy, non-challenging chat with the leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Greenwald couches his love affair with Russian state controlled media on account of his deeply troubled intercontinental soulmate in the thin veil of attacking the New York Times for publishing an article exposing the gulf between the stated purpose of people like Assange and Greenwald and their purpose. Pointing out that US media, too, has corporate, political and at times state influence, Glenn gets crafty:

There is apparently a rule that says it’s perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (Kaplan/The Washington Post), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it’s an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government.

I have no love for the corporate media environment in the United States, but that is not the point.

Glenn is a little new at this, I think. See, pointing out that media outlets have owners who do business with given governments is not quite synonymous with state-controlled media, which is the point here. The hypocrisy is Greenwald's endorsement of Russian state power while wanting his minions to believe that he has a shred of principled opposition to state power.

On top of that, what Greenwald is doing by including VOA and BBC in his hit list of what he considers to be illegitimate media is the same argument conservatives make to try to defund NPR. Voice of America, for example, while funded by the US government, is governed by an independent board, and has a mandate for objective programming rather than simply propaganda spreading, and is forbidden from getting preferential treatment from the US government. A little taste of the VOA charter:

Adhering to the principles outlined in the Charter, VOA reporters and broadcasters must strive for accuracy and objectivity in all their work. They do not speak for the U.S. government. They accept no treatment or assistance from U.S. government officials or agencies that is more favorable or less favorable than that granted to staff of private-sector news agencies. Furthermore, VOA professionals, careful to preserve the integrity of their organization, strive for excellence and avoid imbalance or bias in their broadcasts.

RT, on the other hand is not merely funded by the Kremlin, but controlled by it.

But let's set that aside for a moment. Let's assume that Greenwald's absurd claims equating RT with a myriad of US and west European news media outlets are all accurate. So why doesn't Greenwald express the same kind of venom for RT as he does for US and European media? Is it because it's now hosting his ideological soul-mate Julian Assange? Where is the rage against state power? Greenwald has no problem bashing a New York Times journalist by association because of her employer's behavior during the Iraq war, but evidently, the same standard does not apply to his pal Assange for working for a media arm of one of the worst censorship-loving governments in the world.

Instead, Greenwald steps right up front to defend Assange, Assange's guest the terrorist, and Assange's choice of one of the world's greatest censorship regimes as employer. And that is proof that Greenwald doesn't actually believe the things that are coming out of his own mouth. He has no consistency in his own beliefs. He only has one consistency in hunkering down and defending people he has trumpeted as heroes to his own group of followers.

It appears that Greenwald - and Assange - are perfectly comfortable with state power, state-controlled media, and state-sponsored propaganda when it serves their purpose.Or maybe it's that when it serves their purpose, it's not propaganda.

At this point, I don't think that it would be wildly off the mark to say that Glenn Greenwald is rooting for America to fail as much as Rush Limbaugh is. He certainly has no defining principle, except to defend his possibly criminal friends and any means of propaganda that serves his purpose of not challenging illegitimate state power and government censorship but the legitimate authority of the president of the United States. His heart cries out more for those who released classified information without discrimination, possibly costing lives and presumably, for their terrorist guests.